


A Bloody Nose

by VeryShyViolet



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Post Reichenbach, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 20:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1791451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeryShyViolet/pseuds/VeryShyViolet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Post-Reichenbach. This is how I imagined it went.</p><p>I started this a very long time ago, maybe a year or two now. If people like it enough, maybe I'll continue it. I'm not sure if it's Johnlock or not.</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Bloody Nose

**Author's Note:**

> Post-Reichenbach. This is how I imagined it went.
> 
> I started this a very long time ago, maybe a year or two now. If people like it enough, maybe I'll continue it. I'm not sure if it's Johnlock or not.

John Watson was alone.

Alive. But still alone.

And time seemed painfully slow even long after the Incident, the funeral, and the everything that had to happen after Sherlock's death.

Isn't it funny how everything goes quiet and unmoving and seems "still" after someone dies?

Two years past the Incident, Mrs. Hudson stopped visiting John so often to comfort and quiet the screams of fury, the sobbing, and the bitter laughter. She made him eat when she noticed he was losing weight. Brought him tea and some dinner when he wouldn't move from his chair for anything; a painfully similar imitation of Sherlock, yet for an entirely different reason.

Each day was spent on a routine consisting of very little. John would get up on his own each morning, pulling on his trousers and jumper, and shuffle into the clean kitchen. 

It still gave him a start when the table wasn't cluttered and packed with Sherlock's various experimental gubbins: chemicals, test tubes, glass slides, body parts, and the trusted microscope the detective was almost always sat at when there wasn't a case. The kettle wasn't in danger of being poisoned or burnt through anymore - John used it each day without fail to make two cups of tea. 

One for him, and one for Sherlock. 

The first few times he made the extra cup, he immediately binned it; but the sight of the falling, wasted liquid sent his mind away to make unpleasant metaphors about Sherlock's death.

But he still made the extra tea. Maybe out of respect, maybe out of hope that his friend would magically reappear; insensitive, brilliant, arrogant, clever, exciting... Fantastic as ever.

Now he carried both steaming cups of tea into the sitting room and set the first on the table beside Sherlock's seat. John would sit opposite, second cup in hand. The afghan on the back of his seat would fall down, and be readjusted. He'd sigh and sip, feeling his lips get burnt.

He often got lost in his own thought as he imagined his tall friend was still here in front of him, either draped across the armchair when his body finally shut down from days without sleep, or fidgeting and tapping incessantly without a case ("not even a lost cat in Cardiff!") to occupy his mind.

The rest of the day would be spent in that chair, thinking.

Maybe Mrs. Hudson would get a visit from a friend, maybe a couple, and he'd hear their chatter downstairs before they went into her home. Gossip, usually. One friend in particular, Tabitha, she had a cat die. Got rid of her husband for it (he was allergic and had distaste for small animals), then it went and died on her. Worst thing that's happened to her in her life, she said.

John was often comparing other people's tragedies to his own.

He'd gotten rid of all chance of a normal life (well, as normal as you can get after Afghanistan), and invested all his time, money, energy - invested his goddamn _world_ in Sherlock. And he'd gone and died on him.

John still hadn't come to terms with how he was supposed to live now. Sherlock hadn't been just a colleague, a pain in the arse during social time, a best friend - he was John's livelihood. A necessity to endure life after the war. He gave John the remedy to the odd mix of both withdrawal and trauma when his path in the war ended.

You could say he gave John a new path. But that one had ended as well, ended at a ledge.

Today, as John sat in his chair, watching the other tea get cold in its place across from him, he realised it would be exactly three years since the Incident in a couple days.  
What would he do? Somehow, just the flowers and bringing Mrs. Hudson along didn't feel quite right this time. 

Another thing occurred to him. He hadn't cleaned, moved, or touched any of Sherlock's things since the Incident. He even asked Mrs. Hudson not to on several occasions. This year, perhaps, was it time to move on? Not in the sense of forgetting his friend, oh, God no. More like getting on with his life; little changes so that maybe his sorrow wouldn't hang around as solidly.

Getting a job - paying at least his share of the rent. Mycroft, without a word, had taken on the issue of paying both halves of rent. It had been a quietly accepted thing by John - for a while he didn't care whether it was paid or not.

Cleaning the flat - putting away the various books and possessions of Sherlock's on the tables and sofa. He'd cleaned the table, but that was it. After the starts each morning, he didn't think he could handle seeing the entire sitting room empty of memories.

Going out and being with people - he'd turned down offers from Mike, Molly, Lestrade, and Harry; anyone trying to console him either with lunch or an evening at the pub. The times he had gone, he'd let his eyes sweep the civilians around him. His mind's eye let him see a tall, slender, raven-haired man with piercing eyes standing still against the flooding rush of people. John had to rush for the flat when that happened. Grief would interrupt and threaten him with a chokehold. He knew what he was seeing wasn't real. But it crippled him still.

Was it time to move on?


End file.
